


Walk With Me

by Starcrossedsky



Category: Homestuck, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 11:20:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You do not cry as you walk to him, and pull his hand from his pocket and take it in yours. "Walk with me," you say, and his eyebrows quirk up in the barest suggestion of a smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walk With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Some mild spoilers for Oriko Magica? Yeeeeeah.
> 
> ((Also someone teach me to color code please. FML.))

Your name is Homura Akemi, and you are the Witch of Time.

There's something about that title that makes you want to laugh, because you escaped becoming a witch only by losing the thing you cared the most about, and yet here you are. Witch of Time, running across the Land of Clocks and Banners, blowing imps into bits of grist with both the bombs that are your trademark (were your trademark, in ten thousand universes that never existed) and the bow that was hers, should still be hers, she is the Maid of Hope now and—

"Ain't that ironic?"

You stop time, but that doesn't stop the boy walking towards you, his hands in his pockets and his eyes hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses. If anything, it just seems to amuse him, if the faint upward quirk of his eyebrows is anything to go by.

"I come here to mentor the new Hero of Time, and you've already got everything taken care of like you've been doing this since the beginning of the universe." He kicks at the hour hand in front of him, and time starts up again, a persistent _beatbeatbeat, ticktocktick_ filling your ears as the planet comes back to life. "Not even one doomed timeline running around. How'd you get so good at this?"

"Lots of practice." It is just enough of an answer to be satisfactory, quipped over your shoulder as you turn away. Kyouko's dark pink text is filling the screen on the inside of your shield, which you found on your arrival to this world, a familiar companion to go with a familiar job. The Seer has betrayed your group to follow her own goals, as you expected. You never trusted her, because you alone know what she is capable of, the things she did as a Puella Magi in timelines that only you remember.

You don't have time for this boy, if you are going to save Madoka from Oriko's machinations.

\----

\-- turntechGodhand [TG] began pestering rewoundWish [RW] --

TG: hey  
TG: dont just leave me hanging over here  
TG: i mean you didnt even tell me your name  
TG: what kind of greeting is that  
RW: You didn't give me your name, either  
TG: thought i did  
TG: my bad  
TG: its dave  
TG: dave strider

\----

"I failed her." The words sound hollow in your mouth, and you aren't fully aware of having spoken them. "Every time, I fail her." How many times have you rewound since you stepped into the Medium, since you found again the shield that was born of your wish even more thousands of rewinds ago? The only thing that comforts you is that you are no longer making her situation worse by binding the timelines together.

"What are you talking about?" Dave is behind you, his coolkid front up, as though he's seen this scene as many times as you have, which you know isn't the case, because he is a new influence on this timeline, and you would blame him and his friends for this if you could, but they are the only reason you lasted this long—the only reason you thought that the other group of seven was intended to work beside you instead of against you is because the trolls had already worked through one split session to success. Those seven, who even you had never met _but they must have been Puella Magi once, everyone on your team was, in some forgotten timeline_ lay dead in other places on this timeline, each expertly cut down by the hands, the claws of your Thief and the pistol _that's not her weapon orbs she always used those strange orbs_ of your Seer.

No, Dave doesn't understand, you knew that he didn't from the moment he first made a comment about you succeeding and having no doomed timelines.

You do not cry, as you fold the hands of your friends over their chests, evidence of Kirika's God Tier rampage, a rampage you put to a just end with your own hands, an arrow in her back before Oriko could foresee it and protect her. You stand, and you do not cry, because how many times have you done this before, and how much worse could it be seeing the claw slashes through their bodies and Mami's head cleaved from her shoulders, compared to the perfectly unmarked corpses of magical girls?

This timeline is doomed, you knew that the moment your messages stopped getting through to Aradia and Terezi, but you didn't want to believe it, and besides, Dave is still here, staring at the bodies as though he doesn't quite know what to say. It is the first time you have ever seen him without some witty ironic comment. You step towards him, pull one of his hands from his pocket and take it in yours, as time goes _ticktocktick_ —

"Walk with me," you say, pulling him into the rewind with you, leaving your doomed bodies behind as your consciousnesses rush to a blank slate, a second chance for him and for you, only the latest of many trials and attempts at salvation.

\----

\-- apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling rewoundWish [RW] --

AA: so thats how you did it  
AA: you only rewound your consciousness  
AA: so a doomed self wasnt created  
RW: Yes  
AA: how many times have you rewound now?  
AA: wait  
AA: dont answer that  
AA: i dont think i want to know  
RW: You don't  
AA: that was insensitive im sorry  
RW: I don't mind, Aradia  
RW: I'm used to being alone

\----

You are not alone.

Dave catches your eye, for just a moment, and you still time, backing up his blade with shots from your bow. The ogre hangs in midair for a moment, until you release your hold on the clock, _tocktickticktock_ and it falls and shatters into rewards, like so many others before it. If you close your eyes, it's just like fighting witches, except you always did that on your own, after you promised Madoka that you wouldn't allow her to make the contract. You haven't had someone watching your back in years worth of rewound timelines, and certainly never someone who _understands_ , who knows what it means to watch friends die over and over again, someone who walks about freely in the stopped time you create as though it changes nothing.

He doesn't treat you the way the others do. He isn't suspicious of your motives (he never was, even before he knew about how you manage the timeline), and he doesn't ask questions that you aren't ready to answer. He doesn't speak to you much at all, as long as the timeline is rolling, simply nodding along to the beat of the clock—it's only during moments where time is stilled that he says anything at all, and then he opens up and talks as though you weren't even there. He said once that he needs the noise, that the constant ticking has become his comfort since the loss of his brother and his world, and that without it he has to fill the air with somehow, even if just with his own voice. To the others, his friends and the girls who would have been your friends if you hadn't seen them die so many times, he rarely allows his cool front to drop; you don't ask, but you think that Aradia is probably the only one who has seen the side of him that you have, the weakness in him that only exists outside of time.

You think that if you didn't have to protect Madoka, if that wasn't the only thing keeping you breathing, you could have grown up and fallen in love with someone like him.

\----

"Do you have a wish?" is the first question you ask him about himself, instead of about the game or the plan or his friends.

"A wish?" he replies, raising his eyebrows behind the constant screen of his shades. "Like some kind of genie in a bottle thing? Some guy comes up, offers you three wishes, you fuck up everything with the first two and need the third one to make the world normal again? 'Cause, you know, I could kind of go for normal."

 _Hardly a genie,_ you think to yourself, and you shake your head. "A wish that you would give up everything for. An impossible thing. Something that you would reach even beyond death to achieve."

And he laughs, "Homu, you and I both know that wishing for the impossible never ends well."

It rings so true to you that it isn't for several moments that you realize that he hasn't _really_ answered your question.

\----

Madoka reaches God Tier, just as you always knew she would, because she already had, once, she made a wish and you lost her, and this time, even if she hasn't erased herself from the world, she is just as lost to you.

"You have a choice," the Denizen is saying, and you think that it looks familiar, somewhere in the unfeeling red eyes. "Continue as you have been, and enter into the new universe, or join with those who wander in between."

You look to the far distance, where the symbol of Time floats above a quest bed, and you wonder if you could follow her there, if you could stay with her if you too became a god of the new world. You wonder if she would come to believe you, someday, or if the two of you would simply become one with the fabric of the new universe, the way she did once in another, except it would be the two of you then, together forever but not existing in any other place. There was a time when you would have been okay with that.

You look back over your shoulder, to the boy leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets. He and his friends will leave soon—they failed their session but still survived, and thus they have no place in any universe. They are doomed to wander between sessions, using their knowledge to help those who come after.

You do not cry as you walk to him, and pull his hand from his pocket and take it in yours. "Walk with me," you say, and his eyebrows quirk up in the barest suggestion of a smile.


End file.
